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thefablife

Our buddies in Team StarKid — the Chicago-based theater company that boasts Glee’s Darren Criss among its primary collaborators — have had a busy winter since we last spoke with them. They put up a brand new musical, the comic-book-inspired Holy Musical B@man, which played to packed houses in Chicago, and now has a YouTube debut slated. But perhaps more exciting, the announced today that they’re planning another tour, or Apocalyptour, that includes West Coast dates, throughout May and June.

The last time StarKid hit the road they shared an exclusive peek behind the scenes on their east coast tour, as well as hinted about this upcoming western leg! You can now buy the complete tour DVD on the StarKid site, but for a quick refresher on the StarKid phenomenon watch below:Read more…

Since she came on the scene in the ’90s, Denise Richards has been heating up every movie and TV show she appears in. She won us over with her role in Wild Things, and we’ve been wanting more ever since. But with her fresh, bubbly face we have a hard time believing it’s her 41st birthday! Whether she’s got a guest-starring role in a sitcom (from Friends to Two and a Half Men), a Playboy pictorial or her own reality show, the starlet has showed us that she’s not afraid to put herself out there. As Charlie Sheen’s ex-wife, you’d think she would have looked a little worse for wear after last year’s “winning” turmoil, but she remained unscathed. Instead of trashing Charlie, she quietly published a memoir, adopted a baby sister for daughters Sam and Lola, and reunited with Richie Sambora. And then she went on Christmas vacation with Sheen and the kids. Whatever her secret to inner peace and beauty is, it sure is working! Cheers to many more fabulous birthdays, Denise!

Glee might have been Darren Criss’ national introduction as a song-and-dance man, but his legions of Internet fans already knew him as a singing Harry Potter for Team StarKid, the musical-theater social-media phenomenon. Between shooting Glee and debuting on Broadway in How to Succeed, Criss joined the rest of Team StarKid for part of their first national tour last fall, and he stopped by VH1 earlier this month with some of his co-founders to share some exclusive footage from the tour. They also told us about a possible West Coast and U.K. leg of their jaunt, as they hope bring StarKid beyond the confines of the Net.

“StarKid is an Internet musical theater production group we started in college together and have been doing our best to run since we’ve been out of college,” co-founder Brian Holden explained for the uninformed.

The group initially put videos of their University of Michigan-produced Harry Potter musical, A Very Potter Musical, on YouTube to send to friends and family, but once the extensive Potter fandom caught a whiff of their existence, view counts multiplied, and they transitioned from in-joke to mainstream viral success. To date the group has surpassed 100 million views on their videos.Read more…

Since the moment it was announced that Darren Criss would be taking over Daniel Radcliffe’s role in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying on Broadway, fans have been eagerly waiting for the two stars to cross paths. Well, it finally happened, and while Radcliffe told MTV’s Hollywood Crush his version of the encounter last week, we can definitely say that Criss’ take on the event was a bit more awestruck.

“It was actually a very poetic moment,” Criss told us when he stopped by the VH1 office this week. “I was on stage by myself at a break. There’s nothing as majestic as an empty theater, and I was kind of onstage going through some steps, and emerging from the shadows comes Dan. We had a nice exchange, and it was good to finally meet each other.”

The Glee star is on his second round of filling Radcliffe’s shoes: Long before he was one half of McKinley High supercouple Klaine, he broke into Internet fame as part of Team StarKid, playing Harry Potter in University of Michigan musicals that went viral on YouTube.Read more…